Like Bambi On Ice
by CaffeineChic
Summary: I'm late, I know, I'm sorry!"


"I'm late, I know, I'm sorry!"

She walks into the room and out of her shoes, jacket shucked off and thrown towards the table (it spills to the floor, a pool of cloth). "They wouldn't stop talking." He hears the exasperation in her voice and the quiet mutterings of "late late late."

He rises from his position on the couch in order to make his presence more noticeable as she starts to pull her shirt loose from her pants, fingertips freeing buttons.

"Uh... Laura."

"Oh Gods! Lee! You startled me." Her body jerks slightly as she locks eyes on him now, standing with a hint of abashment at not having spoken sooner. The flash of visible skin enough to invoke an ebb of embarrassment. (in him. not her.)

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...."

She waves it off, smiling, unperturbed. (she refastens all but the last button.) She asks him if his father is home and they both pause as the words flow between them. The words are simple, the question is not complex. The connotation and her tone are the source of the intricacy. (a mother asking a son, a son answering for a father. families are more than blood.) Laura smiles and Lee looks down with the smallest of grins before catching her eyes and nodding towards the bathroom. "Yeah, he's...."

"Thanks."

She is pushing through the door before Lee can call out that he thinks his father is in the shower. He swallows the words as he realises that that probably won't bother her. He is unused to this, the ease of their relationship. His expectancy of it is tainted, he knows, with parents who barely saw, barely talked; who never laughed the way he can hear Laura and his father laugh through the door now. With ease. With love.

(a disharmony had stained his childhood. two people out of sync – distorting the world around them.

now he stands in the swirling sounds of a couple in concert. syncopated when needed – but always the same melody.)

He hears what he can only label as a squeal chased by a "Bill Adama! We're already late, and _your son_ is here – out!" as the door opens and his father emerges, uniform tunic partially buttoned. (with hair in his hands. her hair. in his hands.)

His eyes are glued to the wig that his father holds with absolute care. (this part of Laura that separates and parts from her and passes into his father's guard. her shield under his protection.)

"Doesn't do well in the steam."

"What?"

His father raises his hand an inch. "The… eh, hair. Steam's not good for it."

"Oh." Lee cannot think of what to say, what can he? He is no better with emotions than his father is – and his father is holding a barrage of them in his hands.

Bill pours them both a drink while they wait, and Lee reclaims his seat on the couch. Silence descends – comfortable, mostly awkward only in its newness, that it took so many years for it to click into place.

Laura appears through a freshly showered mist, her body wrapped in a robe that Lee_knows_ is not hers. Lee watches as she pulls a clean outfit from the closet and turns towards his father.

(he knows he knows he knows he should stop being surprised. but he has never known this kind of marriage either for his father or for himself. it is a revelation. he is jealous.)

"Five minutes, I promise." Her words reach his ears as his father smiles softly. Laura steps in and out of Bill's space. (in with a kiss to his cheek, out with a wig in hands.) Bill's fingers trail the inside of Laura's arm from elbow to wrist as she walks away, his eyes following when his touch cannot.

"Take your time, you're the President. They'll wait."

Lee is staring. And is caught.

"Something on your mind, son?"

He meets his father's eyes. "You weren't like this."

"Like what?" Bill is not being obtuse, he does not register that anything is out of the ordinary.

"...with Mom." There is no malice or recrimination in Lee's tone. It is fact not accusation.

(a past remembered overlaid with the present. the differences stand out. they are improvements.)

His father stills, takes a breath, a beat. He nods. "No. I wasn't." He admits not a crime, but a truth. He had not been like this with Carolanne – when he was loyal to the vows but not the woman, when staying away made more sense than being around, when he saw everything with the same focus. Not like now, where Lee can tell that Laura stands out for him, always coloured more brightly than the scenery around her. Lee can see this, the difference, the contrast.

The colour of Laura and now versus the greys of his mother and the past.

Lee nods, accepting, not reproaching. "You're happy." He does not mention the chill that frosts his veins when he thinks of the future. Of if (of when) Laura's colour fades away and his father is left awash in opacity. (the hazy ashen shades of bereavement, of a lifetime cut short by mortality.)

Lee is stricken, suddenly, sharply with the realisation that he will be losing more than a president, a mentor, a friend. He will be losing a parent (two, in fact. He is not fool enough to believe his father will survive the loss. Not really. Not in the ways that matter).

Laura appears again, composed and dressed (except for her feet).

Bill puts his glass on the table and moves towards her. "Ready?"

"Yes – just need my shoes. You sir, are not, though."

She arcs to her right and he curves to the left, her fingers pushing the lapel of his uniform up, deftly fastening a button before he takes over the task. An arm reaching out to steady her as she steps back into her abandoned shoes.

Lee rises to join them as they head out. He trails behind them as Laura's hand claims his father's elbow, as his father's fingers lay softly over hers.

Lee is ashamed in this moment.

(he married _for_ love, not because of it. he married to hurt one woman and let another woman heal _his_ pain.)

He has never lived the life that he is standing witness to – that he is trailing after.

A love life. A life full of love.

He follows behind them.


End file.
